From our home base at the MCNEX booth, we’ve heard some great questions about our technology, roadmap, and vision for the future. Here are the 8 most frequently asked questions we’ve heard so far:

1. What is Leap Motion?

We make technology for VR/AR that tracks the movement of your hands and fingers. It features high accuracy, low processing power, and near-zero latency. All three are crucial for hands in VR.

2. Why hands, and not physical controllers?

We’re not philosophically opposed to using controllers for some types of games. But the magic and power of immersive VR comes from a sense of presence and full embodiment. A direct experience, unmediated by plastic.

3. What is the Mobile VR Platform?

A combination of software and hardware we’ve made specifically for untethered, battery-powered VR/AR devices. At its core is a new sensor capable of 180×180 degree hand tracking, and software that runs at nearly 10x the speed of our existing controller.

4. When will it be available?

We’re working with a variety of OEMs to embed our technology directly into their headsets. The timeline depends a lot on when their headsets come to market.

5. Why not just release a faceplate?

We hear this question a lot, and it deserves a full answer. Since we work directly with OEMs, it will take a little longer to get this technology out to the world than if we released a mobile faceplate. The wait is painful for us too, but we think ultimately worthwhile for the VR community as a whole.

We want to make magical experiences possible. That happens when our tech becomes an invisible part of the design. Releasing a new standalone device would run against that mission because it would keep us firmly rooted as an accessory rather than a fundamental input.

6. Why mobile VR? Isn’t it seriously limited?

Every consumer technology hits the input barrier before it can truly transform the world. Click To TweetInput is a fundamental existential question for virtual reality, and one of its most serious limitations. Every mass consumer technology, from personal computers to mobile phones, hits this barrier at some point. Making mobile VR feel natural and intuitive is the greatest step we can take towards taking it out of early adoption, and towards a transformative technology that can change how millions of people live and work.

It’s also true that there’s a lot of room for mobile VR to grow. Mobile processors have never needed to deal with the intense graphics requirements demanded by VR, and the major mobile VR SDKs continue to evolve. But we expect Moore’s law to hold true; as processing power increases and form factor decreases, we’ll continue to push the edge of what’s possible.

Ultimately we expect our technology will be embedded in a spectrum of form factors – ranging from mobile and all-in-one to PC and console. The Mobile VR Platform is aimed at those first two groups, mostly because they represent the next major wave of generation releases.

For the mobile SDK, our intent is to have it take advantage of these radical new hardware capabilities. Behind the scenes, we’re continuing to build the tools and assets that developers will need once headsets become available. Anyone interested can subscribe for updates at developer.leapmotion.com/android.

8. Why just one sensor?

With today’s technology, multiple sensors would result in a bulky headset, increasing its complexity and power requirements. But sensors are getting smaller, cheaper, and more powerful every year. By the time we hit third-generation VR, your reality glasses will have constellations of tiny sensors with massively enhanced capabilities. And we can’t wait.

The future is wonderful, weird, a little scary. But the strangest thing? How mundane this will all feel in 5 years 😆😆😆 #CES2017